Cemetech has brought the T^3 conference to you for the past 3 years and now we've got (unofficially) CES! I had the wonderful surprise of attending the Consumer Electronics Tradeshow from January 6th through the 9th in Las Vegas while I was in town from the 1st to the 10th. I certainly went for my pleasure and experience but about half way through I figured I could turn this into an article for the site. Below are my observations and general takeaway from the convention; I am purposefully staying away form the big name vendors as they have plenty of coverage. Instead, I walked the booths of the smaller companies who have prototypes or complete products who are seeking funding, distribution and other obstacles. There was a lot on display and I walked out of there with flyers and pamphlets for lots of products. I have no intention of covering everything, instead I will cover what I personally find interesting as well as relevant to the Cemetech community.

There was a strong emphasis on the Internet of Things, also know as IoT, Smart Homes and Smart Appliances and Wearables + Fitness Trackers. There was also a lot of hoverboards, you know the ones I'm talking about. Okay, maybe not a lot, but there was a corner of the convention for mobility and almost every booth there was these things. All looked the same but from different "brands." There was also a mono-wheeled "hoverboard" booth that was raided by the U.S. Marshals so that was cool. Sadly, I did not witness it as I was at the Las Vegas Convention Center about a mile away.

The First day I was at The Sands Convention Center as my hotel was right down the street. It is a two story building with smaller booths on the first floor and bigger demonstrations on the second floor. The second day I was at the Las Vegas Convention Center where the bigger brands were like Sony, Samsung, Nvidia, Oculus and some auto companies. I got sick on the third day and opted to stay in the hotel and try my best to overcome my misfortune because on the fourth day we were checking out of the hotel so I wouldn't have the luxury of staying in bed. The fourth day I spent busing between The Sands and the LVCC getting more information from the companies I wanted to write up on.

Check these out first!

Vie Shair

I didn't try a lot of headphones while I was at CES but I was really blown away by these, which are pronounced as "V Share." A lot of it probably had to do with the style. Almost unheard of, they are open air headphones so rather than have a foam cushion around your ear with a speaker these headphones have a open skeleton between your head and the speaker. On top of that, the speaker is flat and pushes sound directly towards your ear. But Alex? How are these different? Don't all headphones do that?

Look. I dunno. But wow. Conventions like this are loud with ambient sound and the like but when I put these headphones on it all just disappeared. It must be one hell of a mono-directional speaker because I literally could not hear any of the typical ambient noise one would encounter at a convention like this. And the real kicker? I could cleanly and clearly hear the exhibitor talking to me about the product. I was truly fascinated by this technology. The headphones are wireless and last 8 hours on a charge. It's currently a prototype and they hope to add a microphone and plan to add proper noise cancelling technology. There is also a padded thing that can replace the open air skeleton for a more enclosed feeling.

There's also a broadcasting feature built-in that allows other Vie Shair headphones to listen in on what you're listening to. This could be helpful if you are on a road trip and two people would like to watch the same movie. Bluetooth or AUX the audio to one headphone then Broadcast to others. From what I understand, any Vie Shair headphone within the radio frequency (2.4Ghz) range can listen in. You could theoretically fill an auditorium with people all wearing these headsets; not a bad movie theater idea?

The headphones does have a built-in RGB LED in each can but supported features and programmability are still being worked out; I was briefed on "Disco Mode" where a group of headphones can change color in unison or in a pattern. No microphone yet, and the final ports are still being worked on, but if the charging port is indeed going to be USB(-C?) it's plausible to include a push-to-talk mic. When, say at a conference, an audience member would like to ask a question they can push the mic button (a la Family Feud style) and their headset would change color, allowing the speaker to quickly identify the questioner in the audience. This is my imagination going here, not something they've mentioned as this functionality is still being tested and may not ship with the final product.

They are launching the Kickstarter on or after March 1st. I don't have pledge details as the pricing is still being determined but I'm told the best deals will be given to newsletter subscribers. You can find the appropriate form on their website which is linked above. I will, of course, update with a link when the KickStarter goes live as well as details about the pledge tiers.

Update, March 9th:
Kickstarter Page
• Super Early Bird: 1 Pair for $199.
  
• Early Bird: 1 Pair for $249.
  
• Regular: 1 Pair for $299.

RemixOS

Android for your desktop. I was a skeptic when I saw the booth but all that subsided when I played with it. These guys have done an amazing job with this. I don't know the magic behind this but it's literally Android in a desktop form factor. You have access to the Play Store and they had downloaded Microsoft Word, Excel and Power Point and with no alteration to the programs were running as if they were the real deal. Well, they are the real deal but I could very easily pass off this version of Word as a non-mobile application. I sadly did not get a picture of the programs running but there is a small screen shot on their website where they mention "Compatible with Office." Since you still use your Google Account, all of your cloud data is stored and synced across all your Remix OS installations and android devices.

While it doesn't offer the level of integrability I've grown accustom with OS X - answering texts and calls from my computer - but I was informed by a booth exhibitor that if you have PushBullet, notifications will be pushed to RemixOS from your phone. PushBullet does have iOS, Windows and browser support as well; so I think it stands to reason you could get notifications from Windows on RemixOS as well. RemixOS runs off a simple thumb drive and is freely available on their website. It's currently in beta and there is a feedback app available within the OS; though unlike the feedback app in the OS X and iOS Betas it just encourages you to send an e-mail to the developers. It also runs on phones and tablets.

You can also buy a Remix Mini for $69.99 or the Ultratablet for 299.99 but I think it's smarter to download the .iso off their website for free

RecMed First Aid Kits

This get's an honorable mention because I was blown away by this kid and his determination. I'm pretty bad at guessing ages but this inventor couldn't have been older than 15 and he had developed a vending machine for first aid packets. His goal is to get these installed in Amusement parks, convention centers, visitor centers at state parks, amongst other locations. Inside they have kits for bee stings, cuts and scrapes and even a mask for CPR; for those of you unfamiliar with CPR, the procedure requires the person giving CPR to put their mouth on the victim to blow air into the lungs. To prevent blood-born pathogens from infecting you (or the victim) a mask is preferred as a safety barrier.

Other Notable Products

Flux 3D Printer

There were tons of 3D printers at CES but this one stood out to me. It's capable of, obviously printing with PLA, but it can also laser engrave, scan objects in 3D and draw with a pen[cil] and maybe even a marker. I didn't spend a bunch of time here but I really loved the aesthetic of the product and really wanted to mention them. It's not the best printer for you buck, as the bed is rather small but for ~$1000 you get a pretty neat multi-use product. Don't expect to print any slidecases for your calculators with this!

Casio

I feel this is rather obligatory as we do some stuff with their Prizm line of graphing calculators. There were no calculators but they had a strong emphasis with Smart Watches. I didn't spend a whole lot of time here as it was almost all about their watches and other wearables.

Panono

This was pretty cool. It's a spherical camera with 36 lenses. Once taken, the camera connects via WiFi and uploads each batch of photos to the companies servers to be stitched together to create a massive 108MP photo. You can then view each photo on the web or in app or you can download the rectangular photo. The exhibitors at the booth, as well as the pamphlet I received, stated you can download the raw photos and stitch them together yourself. The use of the word raw piqued my curiosity.

As a more-than-amateur-but-not-quite-professional photographer, I love having access to raw photos. They provide superior flexibility when editing since the photos have tons more information than a JPEG file. If I could have access to those 36 raw files, I could stitch them together and edit the panorama as I would a normal photo. But when questioned, the exhibitors wouldn't confirm if these raw files were DNG (Digital Negative) or a proprietary format and kept repeating that I would be able to download the JPEG rectangular stitched pano from their website.

They also had coupons for $150 off the product, but when I found out it already cost $1500 I decided my $0.99 app, 360 Panorama, is still more than sufficient. If it was $500, I would heavily consider this a decent purchase and if it does indeed take real raw photos $500 would be a wonderful ballpark price.

Fusar

We've all seen bikers on the road with either a GoPro or some sort of camera stuck on their helmet. The problem I've had with those is that at the end of the day you have so many minutes or hours of footage you either need to store or sort through to find that one incident. Fusar resolves this with the "Mohawk" by taking the dash cam concept from cars and applying it to the motorcycle; they have integrated GPS and an accelerometer as well as a few social features. The camera comes with a wireless attachment for your handlebars which has two buttons.

The buttons enable a few features, such as recording a 15 second clip and push to talk. What's cool is that the device passively records video and data so when you press the button you get the last 15 seconds of video. There's also crash/collision detection which will save the last 2 minutes of data and send out a message to your ICE contacts and emergency services. The Push to Talk works with any bluetooth headset and allows the rider to record a 10 second audio clip to send to other Fusar riders up to a group of 12. So if you're riding with some buddies, you all have unlimited distance chatting either from the headset or from your phone via the Fusar app. Chat is not real time and the audio clips will queue up to be played sequentially if multiple people send clips at once.

The Mohawk starts at $499.99 and is available for Preorder; though the preorder link directs to a IndieGoGo campaign that has successfully ended last month. With an included bluetooth headset the price is $579.

Every Story

As a photographer this caught my attention, especially for weddings. Load an album of photos into the app and press record. The app records your voice as you cycle through the photos allowing you and others to tell the story behind the photos. As you open each photo, the app remembers and times the playback so those photos pop up at the same time. This would be useful for going over your parents childhood photos with their siblings and parents.

The app currently doesn't support video export but I was told it's being worked on. The app is available for Free on iOS and Android.

PlayStation VR

Yeah, not what everyone here is interested in but I wasn't going to wait in a 3 hour line for Oculus or for the Vive. But as these are bigger coverage points for real media sites (1) (2) (3) I don't think my lack of experience is a huge loss but I certainly did want to try them. I wasn't willing to waste 6-7 hours of my day waiting in lines for 40 minutes of total play time; the demos were about 20 minutes a person.

The wait for PSVR was 90 minutes but thankfully some folks left the line when they were told. It was about 45 minutes after those less interested left. The PSVR demo I tried, Rush of Blood from the Until Dawn story, was about 12 minutes. I had the luxury of watching about 4 people run through the level before me so I went in pretty aware of what was happening and when. In all, the experience was awesome. The HMD screen had a lot of noise in black environments but I chalked that up to being on all day and when watching a movie and the scene is black, the screen is a bit gray rather than solid black. I could also make out individual pixels while in the menu before the level started but once in game the noise and pixels went away and I was fully immersed. I felt the calibration of the controllers changed a little bit through the game but after looking at the pictures taken of me I believe that to be result of me holding the controllers differently as the game progressed; I had calibrated them as if I was holding a gun straight out in front of me but then moved into a more relaxed position as the level went on.

Texas Instruments

Who we've all be waiting for! Am I right? Again no calculators but they had a lot of stuff on display. TI had invited their partners into the booth to demonstrate how these partners used TI chips in their products. There was a giant car replica demonstrating what one company has achieved in self driving cars or something, another had a smart dashboard cluster that displayed speed, tachometer and warning lights for the Engine, Oil, Tire pressure etc. On the dash cluster the representative said it's one chip that does both and that it's programmed so that the error messages are always present even if the main display with the speed and such stops working or displaying.

But by far the most impressive in my opinion were these sensor tags. They have a plethora of sensors embedded ranging from light, humidity, temperature, magnetism, accelerometer and a few others. Some examples they showed me were that you could put one in the garage at home and you could program a Java Applet. Between the two you could create a notification that alerts you when someone is home or, when you leave your garage it can trigger your lights to turn off. It's pretty much a DIY Smart Home solution and I love it. For $29 it sounds like a fun little toy to play around with. And a fun and engaging toy to teach people how to program. I wasn't able to get a battery life time from the representative but the website says it will last 1 year at a 1-second interval frequency.

I almost asked for Peter but given my knowledge of others at the show - I had friends in several positions at companies around the show - he was likely tied up in meetings and talks if he was there at all. Plus I didn't really know what to ask about and there was nothing calculator related he could let slip for us.

Nervana

This is not a booth had a direct experience with. My friend visited their booth and fell in love. He described it to me as this: These headphones stimulate the vagus nerve in coordination with the music you are listening too thus tricking the brain into releasing dopamine to make you feel happier. Another side affect he noted was that he got a tingling sensation down his spine and he immediately knew what it was. Autonomous sensory meridian response or ASMR. From what I understand ASMR can be triggered in various ways (for various people?) and that there is a small but dedicated community to ASMR.

I'm definitely kicking myself for not trying these for myself.

Overall
It was great to experience where technology is headed. It's clear we are heralding the era of a socially connected and driven future brought on by everything from DIY to complete brand solutions for smart appliances, cars and, gadgets for the fabled "smart home". I think it's too early to adopt any particular smart home solution and instead will eagerly watch and follow the technology over the years. Hopefully by the time I purchase a house the companies behind the magic will create an open framework where it won't matter if your dish washer is a Samsung, your dryer is a LG, the fridge a Frigidair, your car a VW and, your cell an iPhone.

My only concern with the IoT and the Smart Home movement is the security/IP Camera service. Every maker I looked at during CES offered a subscription service. I want each home to be it's own personal cloud. I envision a server somewhere in the house to handle the smart home functions, to handle security. I don't mind subscriptions for monitoring but a subscription to store additional video footage is obscene. This is likely a personal qualm but I'd love to see companies offer smart home video surveillance that doesn't rely on the company for, at the very least, video storage.

I saw fridges that could keep track of what was inside (so long as you told it) and it could suggest recipes based on the food inside. Volkswagen had, in their booth, appliances ranging from fridges to thermostats and echoed a statement that mimic'd "Connected Home + Connected Car = Connected People." (Pictured).

My issue with CES is that is immensely huge and as a result likely missed lots of amazing presentations and booths. I got an e-mail after the show that had the statistic that there were more than 3,800 exhibitors across more than 2.47 million net sq. ft. of exhibit space. I walked a good deal of that. In fact, according to my phone I walked 31 miles last week where it was about 17 miles the week before. They did a good job of grouping similar booths together but after two days I felt like I'd seen everything. The app could have used some better planning tools; I was able to select booths and speeches I was interested in but that was it. It would have been great to get notifications that said "To make the 11:30 presentation you should leave now!" But there was none of that. The plus here was that the app had maps of the floors so I could find a vendor, the app would highlight it and I would be able to navigate myself to that vendor as I walked the floor, but it only worked if I was already in the building and on the appropriate level of the building. After the two days I really wanted to catch a few speeches but didn't know where they were or when I needed to leave. So I meandered until I got hungry and walked back to the hotel for food.

The bigger booths, like Qualcomm, utilized Beacon technology and pushed notifications to my phone such as "Welcome to Qualcomm!" as I neared their massive floor exhibit. I think it would have been cool to see these beacons used to introduce me to new areas. "Welcome to the 3D printing area!" or "Welcome to the 2 Wheel Scooter Copy Cat Section!"

More Pictures!

Whoa! That was a very detailed summary! Sounds like CES was a blast!

Regarding the knockoff one-wheeled boards being sold at the same show as the original: the number of bootlegged consumer goods really annoys me to no end. And especially with knockoff brands going so far as to replicate brand logos on their products, I feel there's a growing safety hazard for consumers as more of these devices become wearable . EEVlog showed a really good video: Fake Apple USB Charger Teardown highlighting some of the cheap shortcuts and corner-cutting that goes into fake electronics.

Being a dashcam user, Fusar seems like a really cool idea too. Frequently, I'll want to look at a recent recording; but even at USB 2.0 speeds, browsing through more than an hour of uncompressed video can be a surprisingly large time commitment.

Wow, that was a great article! I'm glad that you had the opportunity to visit CES, and I'm thrilled that you were willing to share the experience with us in such depth. I applaud your decision to look for the small but cool booths that the main news outlets would have missed, and your approach seems to have paid off to me. A few thoughts:

• I have Grado headphones that I believe they describe as "open" in some way, but they definitely have foam rather than that cool open skeleton. One of the things I like about my headphones is that you can hear people around you clearly, but the audio quality is superb. The integration of noise-cancelling so you can selectively tune out the ambient noise sounds great to me, and I'm fascinated by the mono-directional experience you describe. As you know, I love RGB disco-like displays (a la DiscoScreens and PartyMode), so the connected features sound like fun.
  
• RemixOS: while I appreciate the simplicity of Android as an OS, and enjoy it on my phone, I'm not sure I get the appeal of using it instead of a desktop OS on a desktop computer.
  
• Do you know what the dimensions of the bed on the Flux printer are? I think I'm less enthused about this specific printer than by the idea that 3D printers with these features will proliferate, with larger beds and lower prices.
  
• IoT: I agree that the so-called Internet of Things has some serious problems. If you look at how many layers of barely-working components go into the modern internet, then add subscription services and proprietary protocols, you get bad stuff.

Dianzi: Yeah. I don't mind spending a few bucks more for what I know to be a genuine piece of tech; when buying remote shutter releases for my camera I often find the same model/style from different sellers under different names and I try to shy away from those.

Kerm:

• The headphones I tried did not have noise cancelling but still, very effectively, eliminated the ambient noise of thousands of people talking in a large room. I'm sure it may not have been perfect but it was a very noticeable elimination and with the fact that I could still hear the exhibitor was astonishing. I look forward to what these headphones are capable of with active/proper noise cancelation.
  
• As a OS X and iOS power user a lot of my questions centered around being able to work between devices; I can start an e-mail on OS X and pick up where I left off immediately on iOS without opening a draft; Same with Pages, Numbers and Keynote. Then there's also iCloud integration where I can save all my documents to the cloud from the app and access those files from another device. I can start a document on my iPhone, save it then access it on my iPad hours later.
  
  They said there was no functionality like we see in iOS and OS X but since RemixOS uses your Google Account and the Play Store, any apps that save data to the cloud will be accessible on Remix. So you at least have the cloud compatibility. It sounds like RemixOS is what ChromeOS should have been. The GUI was clean and responsive and the apps were all native Android apps one could install on their phone or tablet.
  
• I cannot find the pamphlet though if I had to guess based on some photos (1) (2) (3), I'd say 7-8" square. (Provided full size images for easy sampling and when I find the pamphlet I'll measure it and try and do some math)
  
• My issue is that I don't want my house and appliances to be reliant on an outside service for operation. For the most part, things like the Philips Hue lights and other generic smart home kits don't require an outside server but they do require a connection with IFTTT or at least an outside protocol to be smart but I can still program them to turn on for certain times of the day.
  
  If I could have a real personal cloud - say a rentable, personal AWS S3 - in my basement that my phone, appliances and other devices could communicate with and through to each other I'd be sold. It'd still require an outside internet signal to communicate with out of network devices but at least my security system could trigger my Hue lights to all turn on a bright white with select exterior lights flashing red. Where as currently I'd likely have to pay a subscription to a service for the security, set up an IFTTT recipe and I'd be good to go unless my home loses internet. Then the security footage can't be assessed by servers, the recipe never triggers and my lights don't alarm.

Wasn't CES mostly relevant in the 90s?

CES may have been more highly regarded in the pre-internet focused age, sure. Back then it was easier for companies to use events like these to announce new technology and ground breaking products. But I'd argue CES is still largely relevant for what it does. It brings in all sorts of companies from around the world to show case their latest products, technology and, innovations.

These types of trade shows also bring in all sorts of attendees, most commonly press but I saw people who were there to purchase, distribute and, finance these companies offerings. It gives the little guys the same leg as the big companies with connections to the right people; in other words CES and similar trade shows is now more of a networking facilitator than a platform for companies to make announcements, though it does happen and networking at CES was certainly a large part of the show back then as it is today.

I saw lots of prototypes that were at the show because they needed funding. I saw booths that had products and a small online store but required the distribution to get these onto store shelves in order to meet the demand. I really noticed how eager a lot of these companies were. To shed background, the badges for CES display: your name, where your from, your company and, why you're there. My badge said "Content Services" because I was there to take pictures and the like. Anyways, exhibitors would actively address people who's badge read "Financing," "Distributor" or "Buyer" before talking to me.

I was okay with that. I was there for the experience and didn't really want to talk to everybody. If something caught my attention I'd strike up a conversation, ask questions and grab their promotional material. If something was cool I'd grab their promo material and walk away.

To dismiss this as a 90's era relevancy is an incredibly close-minded thing todo.

That's pretty cool, and that addresses something that I've always wondered about. It seems that it's easier than ever to (for example) crowdfund a device, but so many of these seem to end in failure or at best only produce a few runs for their backers, never become more widely-distributed and purchased devices. I'd assume that face-to-face conversations and getting to know and trust a business partner are still (and will continue to be) sufficiently important that shows like this are very necessary. And I know that Nikky was trolling, but of course there's also the importance of holding a prototype or product in your hand and seeing how it feels and works.

Yeah! It got me hyped for a few products, like the one below. I've also seen a few posts about Nervana in the past few weeks as well. It's an unique feeling seeing these gadgets at a trade show like CES then hearing about them almost a month later. I admit that I didn't try them but judging from my friends reaction he was quite impressed and blown away by the prototype; I think he was sold on it so if he gets one I'll try it out!

Also, I'm interested on your opinion/take-away of the TI Sensor Tags, I thought that'd be something you would have commented on already.



These guys are launching their Kickstarter on March 9th. The Newsletter Subscriber deals I mentioned are basically early bird deals, since subscribers will get an e-mail when the Kickstarter goes live and thus the one-up to preorder right away to snag those early bird prices. Still no words on pricing.

For those interested, Vie Shair has released their Kickstarter which also goes in-depth about the technology behind it. There is a "Super Early Bird" tier for $199, the next tier is $250 and, finally, $299. The MSRP is $399. I think $399 for a pair of headphones is way to high but I'm willing to buy these for $199; Yes, I preordered already. The Kickstarter video shows people running with them on but I honestly wouldn't run with these. It's not something against Vie Share but I've never ran, nor seen anyone run, with can style headphones.

I can't wait to have my headphones and share the amazing and convincing experience I had with Vie Shair at CES with my friends and family.

I got to this one a little late, but here's the IndieGoGo for Nervana. Save up to $60 off the retail packaging by preordering now! (Which is $299).